Palestinians dedicate a new West Bank olive grove to Jimmy Carter

TULKAREM, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian activists and residents planted a grove of 250 olive trees in a northern West Bank town on Monday in memory of the late U.S. President Jimmy Carter, describing him as a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause.

The former president’s legacy is “rooted” among Palestinians and across the globe, said Abbas Melhem, executive manager of the Palestinian Farmers Union. Carter was one of the few world leaders who “stood firmly supporting the struggle of the Palestinians for independence and for freedom,” he said.

Under clear winter skies, Palestinian kids helped a handful of adults place the trees into newly dug holes. Melhem said the 10-dunam (2.5-acre) grove in the city of Tulkarem, titled “Freedom Farm,” would be fenced in to protect it from wildlife or extremist Jewish settlers, who have attacked Palestinian olive trees in the past.

The advocacy group for farmers in the West Bank launched the project in collaboration with U.S.-based nonprofit Treedom for Palestine, which plants trees to empower Palestinian farmers.

Carter, who died last month at the age of 100, brokered the Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978.

In his later years, Carter was highly critical of Israel’s military rule over the Palestinians, saying conditions in the occupied West Bank amounted to apartheid. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state.

“I think planting olive trees that live at least 100 years old like him is a very suitable way to honor his life and his legacy,” said George Zeidan, the Carter Center’s Director in Israel and Palestine.